Not my house ....

Beautiful backlit ...

                                       Now I know what those plant tags mean by backlit

Leaves , leaves and more leaves

Lovely as they are, I've been raking them up every day. Not waiting till they get cold , wet and heavy . Most of my plants hate being smothered . And the bulbs won't care for it ether.

A little session of gentle raking every day, must be healthy 

  

Not easy to get around all the succulents though, with out ripping them out.

The Norwegian Maple leaf , every year I curse these leaves ... but I  do make plenty of leaf mold  . So far I've  filled two HUGE, HUGE bags . That with last years collection , which has broken down quite nicely. I should be able to spread it around the garden in Spring. 

Getting the leaves out of the Rhododendrons is a first this early, I always wait too long , they borrow deep   inside. Then I end up getting frustrated with trying to pull them out resulting in  a mass of broken branches.

Autumn inspiration...

Having sat around all summer , just enjoying and making notes of things I wanted to change. Now the time for action .

This area I've never liked . With the Honeysuckle growing on the shed .  Wrapping itself around the Fig , which never seemed very happy in this spot.

So, I just pulled it out ! easier than I expected , it came out in one good hard tug .

It's moving South ! the south facing part of the garden .

And in it's place... can you see it ? Something I've had my eye on a long time ...Mimosa 'Chocolate Summer'  !

I think it will be happy and make a big mess of pink blooms  . And probably grow  as fast as my Acacia . And  much taller than the twenty feet claimed on the tag . But I've become such a dab hand at pruning. What a lovely canopy it will create in the summer ! 

October Blooms...

I've tried to find a few blooms that I didn't post last bloom  day.  Since , I  planted this a few weeks ago to fill in  a bare patch from all my plant moving . Helenium 'Sahins Early Flowerer' 

This sweet little Guillardia grandiflora ' fanefare' I've had for years , I've never posted it on Bloom day . And I nearly killed  it this spring when I planted over the top of it.

Levcoceprum Stellipilum 'October moon'  with it's pink bottle brush bloom

Now that I know where I went wrong with growing Agastaches ... cutting them back to the ground . I 've started growing them again ! 

The last of the Lychnis blooms ... thankfully. I 've been tugging out seedling by the bucket load 

A dainty  companion for the Phormium , Scutellaria suffrutescens

Rhapdosia longituba, a new planting from Northern Japan , which I love , should get to about 3ft  of spindly growth , nice filler for between the evergreen Fatsia and Osmanthus  

An odd white flower from my packet of crimson bedder , just now starting to bloom nicely ...quick before the first frost !

And lastly , I missed the blooms , all tucked under the follage, but here are the ripe berries of Rubus lineatus Thank you Carol for hosting and for more blooms visit .maydreamsgardens.com

A days work...

A glorious sunny dry Autumn weekend . Once we got out , it was dig this , split this , move this , prune this, remove this , plant this...

An over grown Rosemary, thinned out bamboo and  Acacia all got the treatment...

Then it was time to snooze 

visions of early orange...

Today was the first day since the rains returned that this fair weather gardener was out. I 've kept this tray of  Wallflowers that I started from seed all summer , just waiting for autumn to arrive. So today I rampaged around pulling out armloads of Morning Glory ..sorry Grand Pa Ott and Nicotiana sylvestris to make room .

Granda pa Ott ... gone . But you were just a tangled mess and I won't let that happen again.

A heap of Nico and Ott 

Lots of space for early spring orange Wallflowers